The Soul You Can See
by alicat54
Summary: "Dean always wanted to be just like his father, so when his daemon finally settled, he locked himself in the impala and refused to come out." One shot drabbles. His dark materials crossover. Features witches, Gabriel, Castiel, Ellen, Purgatory, John. Out of chronological order.
1. Dean

...spn...

Dean always tried to be just like his father, so when Alena finally settled on his fifteenth birthday he locks himself in the impala and refuses to come out.

"I don't know what you expected of me," the dog growls from the back seat, interrupting his tirade.

"We were supposed to be an eagle too, or a falcon or hawk- something cool with wings!"

Alena gazed balefully up at him, head balanced on her paws. "Anthony didn't have wings."

Dean's emotions ran against a faded memory of four white husky paws and watchful blue eyes. Mary Winchester shared her daemon's eye color and protective nature. His anger crumbled.

"Come here," he said, gesturing to Alena for the first time that day. Joyfully she scrambled from the back seat into his lap, squishing him against the door as she tried to fit all her girth between his body and the wheel. Dean laughed and scratched her ears.

...spn...


	2. Sam

...spn...

Sam marched down the street, determined to find a bus headed for California. A thread bare backpack hung from his shoulder, holding with it all his worldly possessions, save one.

Something tugged against his heart and he glanced back.

His daemon, still an angry pole cat after his argument with John, sat nose to nose with Dean's Alena.

"Ava," he called sharply. She immediately leapt into the air, her feathers dark against the fading light. The raven hovered above Sam's head, before landing heavily on his shoulder.

"I don't think I'm going to change any more," Ava croaked.

"About time," was all Sam said.

...spn...


	3. Working Dog

...spn...

Sam knew that the only reason they hadn't gotten called out whenever they impersonated police officers and federal agents, was because of Alena's purebred german shepherd form.

Only lawmen or those suited to he trade had working canines as their daemons.

...spn...


	4. Ben

...spn...

Ben Braden's daemon settled at an early age, after a man who his mother knew saved him from a monster.

"I liked her," Silva said, thinking of the large shepherd which had carried her to safety. "She smelled familiar."

"Like Joel?" Ben asked, referring to his mother's grey goose.

"No," the labrador sneezed. "Like home."

...spn...


	5. Lisa

...spn...

When Lisa found herself pregnant with Ben, she hung up her cloud pine branch and never went North again.

Her only regret is that when her son's daemon finally settles, it can no longer taste the freedom of the sky.

Much later, she sees a black lab and larger than life german shepherd rolling together on the front lawn, while Dean explained the inner workings of a car engine to Ben in the driveway.

She decides that it is a good thing.

...spn...


	6. Witch

...spn...

In this world, Lisa Braden's grandmother loved a man from Texas named Lee Scoresby.

She came from the North, but gladly traveled south with her lover to live on a ranch in the desert.

They flew every day across the country in a giant balloon, each sating the wonder lust and loneliness of their hearts.

Together they had a daughter, and Lisa's grandmother left before the child could witness her father's mortality catch up to him.

Lisa is told that she takes after her grandmother, who had a snow goose daemon similar to Lisa's grey.

She was a cloud witch, and in this Lisa also takes after her.

...spn...


	7. Alive

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When Dean woke up, Alena had already dug him out of his coffin.

Her ribs stood out under matted fur and Dean could never remember a time when her fangs and claws looked so sharp, but he wrapped his arms around her neck and sobbed.

Later, he wouldn't be able to tell you why.

Alena knew. She kept those memories of blood and brimstone buried as far down in her mind as she could to save Dean having to relive them.

Eventually, though, everyone needs to remember.

...spn...


	8. Faith

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Alena hovered over Faith, gently nudging and guiding the shifting daemon (a bird, always a bird) with practiced ease born of raising Sam's Ava.

(Faith was what the Winchester brothers had taken to calling her. Her real name was something in Enochian they couldn't pronounce.)

"She's so young," Alena confided to Dean one night. "She's just been born, and she's so scared to lead her person astray that she can't bring herself to even speak to him. I have to look after her. It's our fault she's here."

"He said angel's didn't have daemons."

Alena looked at him, eyed glinting red in the reflected lamp light. "She told me Castiel's not going to be an angel for much longer."

Dean cursed softly and reached for a beer.

...spn...


	9. Mourning

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"Faith! Where's Faith?" Alena panted at the angel.

Castiel looked at the daemon, hand still outstretched from healing Dean's face. "She's gone back to where she came from."

"Where is she?" she shepherd asked again, voice growing desperate.

Castiel reached a hand out to hover just over the dog's head. "I'm not human any more. She's gone."

"Cas," Dean stared with newly repaired eyes at him. "Cas, are you God?"

The angel smiled. "That's a nice compliment, but no."

A lone howl rang through the graveyard, mourning two lost children.

...spn...


	10. Castiel

...spn...

The only time Faith ever asked something of Castiel, it got her killed.

"Castiel save them!"

Then in a flash of Lucifer's grace, she was gone.

Later, the angel contemplates the daemon he didn't have enough time to know.

He wonders that if he had taken more time to understand her, he wouldn't be making such amoral decisions now.

...spn...


	11. Mary

...spn...

Anthony settled late in Mary's life, after she graduated from high school.

Mary was proud to be the first Campbell for three generations without a wolf daemon.

Her parents always considered this a great disappointment.

They never considered that a husky really only was one step away from a wolf, it just has its priorities in a different place.

...spn...


	12. Birds

...spn...

"You and Dad, you're two of a kind," Dean growled at Sam, hand fisted in the scruff of Alena's fur.

Sam opened his mouth to shout a protest, but he noticed Dean's gaze slide away from him. His eye flicked up to where Ava perched in the rafters, and his lips thinned.

His daemon swooped to his shoulder with a silent command, mirroring a memory of eagle's wings doing the same thing throughout his childhood.

For a moment Dean's eyes flared with jealousy. Alena growled, and the moment passed.

"You're wrong," Sam snarled, stomping from the room.

...spn...


	13. Voice

...spn...

Ava sometimes wonders if Sam heard her voice the way Dean heard Alena's.

If he could, would they sit together beside the impala like Dean sometimes did with his shepherd?

She can imagine Sam's hand rubbing small circles on her back as he sipped a cold drink. He would ask her questions too softly to hear, and she would answer with flick of her wings, and he would nod and _listen_.

Once- and only once- she wished to be Dean's daemon.

'Dean would hear my voice,' she thinks, eyes forced closed at the sight before her. 'He knows who he is. He always knows the right thing to do. He would listen to me, not some demon hussy!'

She opened one eye and flinched in disgust at the red liquid splashed across her person's face.

He wouldn't be able to hear her voice until he came down from his high, but with Ruby at his side that was an unlikely occurrence.

The bird turned away.

'No,' she thought, 'I could never do that to Alena.'

...spn...


	14. Wings

...spn...

Alena never let herself be jealous of Ava's form.

Dean always wished to have a bird daemon as a child, and Alena remembers taking to the skies with Cissera, learning battle tactics which required wings, while Dean practiced with a shotgun under John's watchful eye.

Whenever their father left though, Alena liked to have her feet on the ground. A bird couldn't protect anything more than its nest, but a dog, or wolf, or bear- they had territory. They protected their homes.

Sometimes though,she wondered if everyone would fly away one day and leave her alone.

She never told this to Dean, but he knew.

...spn...


	15. Secret

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Faith knew a secret.

She would settle as a mocking bird, and she would not live long enough to appreciate it.

She thought her future knowledge it might have been because she was the daemon of a divine, if falling, being, but anyone who knew Castiel well enough wouldn't be surprised.

Mocking birds copy the sounds they hear around them into songs, repeating the same litany of chirps and twirls for hours on end until someone finally gets fed up enough to toss a shoe at it.

They sing these ditties in order to anchor themselves to their surroundings and define what territory they consider theirs.

Mocking birds do not play well with others. They might look unassuming, but will attack animals one hundred times their size to defend their nests. They're fierce little things when provoked.

Faith whispered her secret to Alena one night in a motel, while the dog slept after a particularly bad hunt. She felt the shepherd, more than any other being, had a right to know.

...spn...


	16. Gabriel

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To keep up his disguise as a trickster, Gabriel fashioned himself an illusionary daemon.

As the years went by and his tricks kept him in close proximity to humans and pagan gods, he dispelled the illusion less and less.

He started talking to her between pranks, and always remembered to materialize a treat for her to eat when he munched candy bars.

She didn't have a settled shape, she didn't need one. On the job she would morph into any number of animals to suit his current disguise. Pagan gods never let their daemons near each other (an old superstition: know the name of a god's daemon, and you can control the god), so she never needed a set shape to meet them.

Sometimes, though, when they were alone, she would perch on his shoulder as a black and white magpie and cackle at his latest schemes.

He would watch her strut across the table, to critically pick at the gaudy plastic gems lining the curtains. She had a habit of hoarding the shiny trinkets, but selecting one or two as her favorites to keep near her perch fo as long as they stayed in that location.

Gabriel thought of real magpies, and their tendency to hide in plain sight under trees and brush to escape faster flying predators, and wondered what her preferred shape said about him.

Then he would have to remind himself that he was neither a god nor mortal, and she didn't exist as more than one of his illusions.

Still, he liked to pretend.

"Mal," he croons to her one evening as he stroked her feathers. "Your name is Mal."

She cocks a black eye at him.

"Thank you," she said. "It's about time you gave me a name."

The angel smiled.

...lol...

mal'ach is messenger in Hebrew.

...spn...


	17. You're so Real

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"You're not going to let it happen, are you?" the magpie hopped around the burnt out ring of holy fire, feathers askew from when the Winchester's daemons had tried to catch her.

Gabriel didn't look at the bird. "There's nothing I can do."

"You could help. I know it's not in our nature to fight, but that doesn't mean we can't."

His gaze burnt where it settled on her.

"And what do you claim to know about my nature? You're not even real."

"I'm real to you."

He snarled, and the bird blinked out of existence as though she had never been there at all.

Suddenly the angel felt very alone.

...spn...


	18. Dust We Return

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Lucifer looked in disgust at the black and white bird perched on his brother's shoulder.

"Brother, I knew you went native- but really!" Mal snapped her beak at him, hiding her uncertainty behind a wall of bravo. His lips twisted. "I hope you didn't catch anything."

In the moment before his death, before his wings burnt away to Dust, Gabriel wondered if Mal would be there floating along beside him.

He felt a soft feathered body rest against his cheek.

"I'll follow you," she whispered, "because I love you best."

The angel tried smiling, but couldn't find the energy.

'I love you too,' he wanted to say.

Four ashen wings burnt the floor that night.

Somewhere, two sparks of grace filled Dust danced in the light.

...spn...


	19. Posession

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The first symptom of demonic posession is when the posessed human's daemon loses its ability to speak.

Demons try to disguise this fact by pretending to whisper to the daemons in little nonexistent conversations, but usually a daemon will be adverse to touching a demon so such deceptions are easy to spot if you know where to look.

When a human distances themselves from their daemon, or stops listening to its words, they are in danger of becoming posessed.

Demons can only silence that which is not heard.

It was something Ava learned the hard way.

...spn...


	20. Teaching

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"I'm going to tell you both something very important, so listen up." Cissera flapped her great wings, knocking Alena and Ava down from where they had been taking turns changing into larger and more lavish creatures.

Sam and Dean knelt a few feet away, completely focused on their game of shooting as many cans off the fence as possible with only one bullet. So far Dean was in the lead, after clipping a tin of ravioli and causing it to fall into a can of pepsi and beans, causing all three to fall down. John sat in the impala nearby writing in his journal.

Alena snapped to attention, flowing seamlessly from a peacock to a threadbare looking bald eagle. Ava watched her carefully, letting her tropical plumage fade to the grey of a hawk.

"We flying?" Alena chirped eagerly.

Cissera shook her head. "No, just listen."

Alena shifted to a coyote in dissapointment and pricked her ears forwards. Ava nestled by her side as a fox.

"We won't be taking you hunting just yet, the boys are too young still, but there are things you should be learning now as a precaution."

Alena's yellow eyes stared at her unblinking, drinking in every word.

"For instance, ghosts. They're one of the more common hunts you'll find. What can you tell me about them?"

"They're dead people," Ava said softly. "and you can't stop 'em unless you've got salt."

Cissera nodded her head. "That's right, people can't touch ghosts unless the ghost want's to be touched, but we can."

Ava shrank into Alena's side. The coyote's ears flattened against her back. "What? Touch another person?"

"They're not people," Cissera stated, "or not any more at least. I'm not telling you to go attacking ghosts; it's just a precaution, like knowing what a crossroads deal is. Knowing something like this could save your life one day."

"Have you ever?" Alena asked, awe creeping into her voice.

"Yes," the eagle said. "Many times."

"What's it like?" Ava's vulpine face peered cautiously at her, interested despite her misgivings.

"It's like," Cissera sought for the correct words. "Like flying through a cold mist. It felt-"

'WRONG,' she wanted to say, but couldn't.

She ruffled her feathers and continued. "The dead go places we can't-remember that. This is the world we live in. They aren't human any more, and have no problem touching a live person's daemon. You two need to learn to defend yourselves."

"Yes ma'am." the canines chorused.

"Good." Cissera stretched out her wings. "Now, who wants to learn how to track a monster in the dark?"

Alena barked happily, changing at once into an eagle again. Ava, more hesitantly, followed suit.

...spn...


	21. Motivation

...spn...

Golden eagles mate for life.

Cissera knew that she would never love another like she did Anthony, but that never stopped John from going back to Miss Milligan's house.

Cissera liked the woman's stag daemon, and she adored Adam's Abigail (she always shifted into something soft and cuddly and huddled under her wings the way Alena once did when Dean was young), but she did not love them the same way she loved Mary's husky.

John knew, of course. It was what kept him hunting Mary's killer after all.

...spn...


	22. Dream of Death

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Daemons don't have an afterlife to go to.

Humans do, if they believe in such a thing, but sometimes even believers become caught in the cracks. When that happens they slip into a grey world guarded by birds with women's faces- but that is a different story.

Alena doesn't remember most of what happened when she and Dean died. She remembers hell of course, who could forget, but there was a span of time unaccounted for before the rack and blood. A span of time where Dean wept - truly alone for the first time in his life.

Alena dreams, and remembers.

She is floating through the veil of time and worlds. She is infinite, yet smaller than a mote of dust. She is Dust.

She remembers being in this position before- so many many lives and times ago.

Dean- but he wasn't Dean then even though he was still hers- owned a boat. He traveled all around the world, stealing hearts and merchandise whenever the fancy struck him. He abandoned his solitary life when his family's children started to go missing.

Alena- but she wasn't called that then either- remembered the taste of Gyptian eels, the sleek power beneath her mountain cat's skin, and the empty box with the name of their little sister's daemon.

He died trying to save a little girl from getting her soul cut out.

Another life, another memory...

Dean as a firefighter with two small children; Alena not existing as more than a whisper in the corner of his heart.

Dean as a demon who not so much fell, as sauntered downwards; Alena as a snake twined around his ankle.

There were too many to count, all present before her eye.

Alena dreams, and forgets when she opens her eyes.

...spn...


	23. Anger

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Ava doesn't remember being dead. She only can recall a sense of perfect bliss and peace.

She was angry with Dean for bringing them back, up until she found out what it cost.

...spn...


	24. Acceptance

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"I had one job, and that was to protect you Sam," Dean buried his face in his hands. His brother lay still on the bed, flesh cold. "It was our job, and we failed."

"I know what you're thinking," Alena said beside him, her eyes never leaving Sam's face.

"He's our brother."

The shepherd turned her head to look at him.

"You would barter me to a demon as if I were some cheap date."

Dean didn't look at her.

"I would be like Cissera- the way she burst into flame when dad died."

He closed his eyes tightly, but a single tear managed to escape.

Alena bowed her head. "Alright."

Dean looked down at her.

Her ears lay still. "It's ok, I understand. I miss them too."

Alena didn't say anything more as Dean got into the impala and drove them to a crossroads.

She remained silent as he buried a box with his name inside and negotiated with a red eyed demon.

She couldn't help but scream when that very dame demon placed claw like hands on her back and carved a specific date- exactly one year from now at midnight- into her flesh.

Dean carried her back to the car, taking care to place her gently on the back seat, before driving back to Sam.

...spn...


	25. Children

...spn...

Alena did a lot of things she wasn't proud of while in hell with Dean, but ripping out the throat of the hound that killed them did not number among those regrets.

Her subsequent appointment as alpha of a pack of hell hounds definitely was regrettable (or at least regrettable to anyone caught in the sights of the most brutal and efficient pack of hounds this side of Purgatory).

The litter of puppies she left behind might have counted as one, but she wasn't quite sure yet.

...spn...


	26. Unknowingly

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Dean inevitably fathered more children than people thought.

Castiel and Sam once entertained themselves for an evening calculating the exact number. The ended up with seven point two.

Dean has unknowingly met four of his children. Alena claimed them as her own the moment she laid eyes on them.

Ben will forever be Alena's favorite, because she and Dean could act like a parent in front of him- even if it was a short lived act.

...spn...


	27. Daughter

...spn...

His eldest daughter worked as a nurse in the trauma ward of a hospital. She was running, a bag of bandages under her arm, when the dark man appeared around the corner.

They collided solidly- her badger daemon felt her dizziness and lay dazed on the floor.

"Woah there sweetheart, you ok?" She gazed bemused at the hand stretched out to help her up.

She felt the man's shepherd daemon nudge her fallen Rizzo.

"Yeah, I'm fine!" gathering up the fallen gauze, she dashed to room 156. She arrived in time to staunch the man's bleeding (from four large gash marks across his back. He claimed to have been attacked by a bear).

It didn't register until much later that her daemon didn't snap at the dog's touch (like he usually did around strangers), almost as though he felt safe in her presence.

...spn...


	28. Mouse

...spn...

Chuck's daemon was a mouse.

She had the largest eye to size ratio of any mouse daemon ever recorded (not that any one knew or cared).

No one ever noticed that when Chuck was going through a mental breakdown at finding out that his fictional world was real, she didn't seem surprised.

"You knew didn't you." The writer accused, hands still over his keyboard.

Maizie blinked too big eyes at her person. "Of course. Who do you think sends you those visions in the first place?"

...spn...


	29. 721 Spoiler Warning!

...spn...

Spoilers for 7.21 !

...spn...

Dean looked at the fallen angel. "What are you going to do now?"

Castiel smiled. "I don't know. Isn't that amazing?" In an instant he was gone.

He appeared in a field on a mountaintop swarming with bees, content to watch their path to the flowers. He was at peace.

"Castiel?" a grey bird with white striped wings nested beside him in the grass.

He had taken more than just Sam's 'taste' of the devil when he transferred the damage from the Cage.

"Hello Faith."

"I'm so tired."

He could feel her weariness weigh down his mind- the part of the mind humans called heart. It was a strange experience. Last time he neared the state known as mortality, he couldn't appreciate the depths such a piece possessed.

Now with his powers intact he could contemplate.

Dean was right when he said angels didn't have the right equipment to understand humans.

His eyed a pink wildflower playing host to a honeybee. "I know."

"Can we rest now?"

He felt the Prophet become captive of the Leviathan- felt two more of his brethren fall- felt an angry spirit once known as Bobby unleash a terrifying power- felt every atom of the cosmose shudder and sing as another soul was exstinguished in the belly of a black blooded monster-

Blue eyes slid to meet black. He smiled. "Yes, I think so."

The bird closed its eyes. "Thank god."

...spn...


	30. Hendrickson

...spn...

jus in bello

...spn...

The reason Hendrickson didn't like the Winchester criminals did not entirely have to do with the fact that they were raging monster hunting lunatics.

No, his main point of hatred focused on one Dean Winchester.

Brix barked, disturbing the FBI agent's concentration from the files spread out on his desk.

He frowned at his daemon. "What?"

The dark haired shepherd looked at him with green eyes. "You're doing it again."

Hendrickson snapped the brother's case file closed and swept it into his desk drawer. "I'm fine."

He stood up to go to the coffee machine in the corner of his office, the dog's eyes never leaving his back.

"You can't let the perps get to you. A hunter needs a clear mind."

The man snorted. "What do you know about hunting? You're about as domestic as a house cat."

Brix rolled her eyes. "We're as capable as any wolf, and I'm less likely to get shot near a sheep farm."

Hendrickson returned her expression as he carried the steaming mug back to his desk. "Well it's not a wolf I need on this case." He swept the files into his desk drawer, pausing a moment to stare at a picture of one of the brother's daemon.

"You're worried, because you know he thinks like us."

He ran a hand over his head. "No, I'm angry because he gives shepherds a bad name. Guys like him, they're usually the wolves and jackals-"

"-And rattlesnakes, and dingos, and mountains lions, and there was that hyena once."

"That was a woman."

Brix shrugged. "Same principle."

Hendrickson snorted took a sip of his coffee. He burnt his tongue and hissed.

Brix tried not to look amused as she settled back under his desk. "We will find this feral dog, and we will put him down. Don't worry."

"I'm not," the agent replied.

The phone rang and Hendrickson picked it up.

"Yes?" he listened, face impassive.

"What?" Brix asked once he had hung up.

He smiled at her. "We got a tip."

...spn...


	31. Anna

...spn...

Anna's daemon was a golden retriever named Joseph. He was the most beautiful dog Alena had ever seen.

"I'm going to die," he whispered to her as they crouched under the impala, their people occupied inside.

"No," Alena reassured, "We won't let that happen."

Joe shook his head. "They will find and kill us, or Anna will regain her grace: either way I will die."

"I don't understand. If Anna has her grace-"

"She won't be my person any more. She won't be human. I will die."

Alena felt sick. "That's not a choice. Anna would never-"

"She would," the he licked her nose and lay his golden head on hers. "Because she loves Dean. And I would let her, because I love you."

"But will she remember that when she's an angel again?"

Joe shrugged. "I don't know."

...spn...

"Close your eyes!" Anna screamed as flashes of light ruptured along her body. Dean immediately threw an arm over his face, but Alena watched.

Joseph lay where he had fallen on the ground, his form fading into tiny motes of light which became absorbed into the light surrounding his person.

His blue eyes met hers, and he smiled sadly.

Alena bowed her head. An explosion rocked the room, and he was gone.

She howled.

...spn...


	32. Spoilers season 7 finale: Purgatory

...spn...

spoilers for season 7 finale

...spn...

The forest loomed around the man and angel. Red eyes glinted in the underbrush promising pain.

Dean paid no attention to this.

He lay gasping on the ground, hands cradled against his chest as though trying to hold together the pieces of his heart.

"Alena?" He gasped, not even noticing Castiel surveying the landscape behind him. "Alena, where are you?"

No comforting lick or nudge answered.

His being felt stretched thin against the cosmos.

"Daemons cannot enter purgatory." The deranged angel looked at him passively.

"What?" Dean tried to focus on Castiel's familiar growl, but the pull against his soul was too much.

"We have to get out of here," was the only response, before the voice, along with its owner, blinked out of existence.

Dean grit his teeth and tried to stand. Either he pushed his pain aside or he died a horrible bloody death.

He never felt so alone.

...spn...


	33. Stretching Game

.

...spn...

Dean and Alena never played the 'stretching game' as children.

Only once did they test the distance between them, before Alena flew back to his breast and dug sharp claws into his skin, trembling. They promised never to do it again.

Sam, on the other hand, found a strange academic delight in leaving Ava in the impala while he ran down the road, or having her sit in the very tip top of a tree while he jumped to the ground.

Ava bore the discomfort, only because she knew it hurt him just as much as it did her.

Only once did she try to pull away from him. She crept into the back seat of the impala and hid under the seat, unwilling to leave.

That was the night Jessica died.

She never tried it again.

...spn...


	34. Ellen

.

...spn...

Ellen's daemon Everet frightened Alena.

Not just because the enormous bear could hold the shepherd down with one paw if he needed to, but because he never let Alena out of his sight.

She knew it wasn't something personal, Everet never let Jo's daemon (settled recently as a pale fox) more than six feet away from him.

Only Ava could escape the grizzly's protective glare, but even the raven had to face the consequences for such flights.

It was the good kind of frightened, Alena supposed, as the bear rolled one large paw over her head. It was the kind of fear you felt only when you were perfectly safe.

...spn...


End file.
